Pollution Busters

by Altair student, age 8

This webpage is dedicated to our environmental projects. We were inspired by the book “Who Really Killed Cock Robin?” and started learning everything we could about helping the environment. Our class visited waste and water treatment plants and even a city dump to learn more about where our waste goes.

The Altair Students are also working on a second website dedicated to Stopping Pollution: If you want to visit our class website: go to StopPollutingIt !

We’ve learned lots of interesting facts. One of them is… sometimes oil leaks into storm drains and the storm drains always lead to the nearest body of water and all the rivers lead straight to the ocean! So please do the earth a favor and clean up all the trash in your neighborhood. If you don’t have any trash, then please plant a tree or do something that will impress Mother Nature.

Have a fun time exploring!

Help the Earth! Volunteer!

Volunteers are needed to help protect the environment. We learned how we could be great volunteers:

Think of other people

Listen well and throw out ideas

Be engaged and have lots of excitement!

Share and take turns if you are in a group

Never break promises

Be kind to others

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!

One of the most important preventing polluting rules are the 3 R’s

The first R stands for REDUCE. That means turning off the light whenever you leave the room.

The second R stands for REUSE.

That means once you’ve outgrown your toys and clothes, you should pass them along to anyone who needs them.

The third R stand for RECYLCE.

That means to put aluminum cans or anything else that can be recycled into the recycling bin to be made into something completely new and reusable.

Too Many Demands. Too Little Resources.

There is only so much resources on earth, most of are resources are replaced by fresh ones. However some resources regenerate very slowly like oil. Oil is made from compressed carbon. It takes million’s of years for it to break down!

Fun Facts *

Only 11% of the earths surface is used to grow food

The US has less then 4% of their forests left

40% of our waterways are undrinkable

More then 1/3 of all energy is used by people at home

84% of all household waste can be recycled

One in four mammals is at risk of extinction

At least 50 million acres of rainforest are lost every year

* Source: 40 Environmental Facts, The SUN Report, 5/27/2010

Space Junk

There’s lots of trash in outer space! Can you believe it? A sea of space junk is floating around today.

From broken up pieces of a satellite to a spatula that an astronaut lost on spacewalk. If even a speck of paint hits a rocket,it could cause the ship to blow up or worse!

Spacecrafts are programmed to return to Earth or burn up after their mission.

Oil Spills

Lots of oil spills happen each year. Oil spills are very harmful to all living beings! Sometimes oil ends up on shore harming and killing people, seagulls, and sea turtle eggs.

Some oil spills are known world wide like the BP oil spill.

In oil spills, many gallons of oil is wasted. (Look for my chapter: “Too Many Demands. Too Little Resources”)

Air Pollution

Lots of things can cause air pollution!

This is a list of things that cause air pollution:

Airplanes

Factories

Jets

Waste

Trash fumes

Many more things pollute the air. If we pollute the air with fumes, then it will make it harder to breath!